The physical examination and development of public school boys : based upon records of over 40,000 observations : a paper read before the Association on April 4th, 1899 / by Cecil Hawkins.
- Hawkins, Cecil.
- Date:
- 1900
Licence: In copyright
Credit: The physical examination and development of public school boys : based upon records of over 40,000 observations : a paper read before the Association on April 4th, 1899 / by Cecil Hawkins. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.
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![and tliat such variation is a part of the general scheme of their growth, and is to l)e regariled as the normal condition of their development. We have only to look around us to see that there are fully as many different types of human beings as there are of horses or sheej). Now, nobody wouhl dream of siiying that the weight of a r.icehorse in training w'as so much below the average of horses of the same height, that there was gnive reason to be apprehensive of some constitutional defect. Xo one would e.xpect to find the same r.ite of growth in a Scotch black-faced lamb as in one of the Down sheep bred by special selection to secure early maturity. Yet we are constantly told that a healthj' child at such and such an age should grow so many inches a year. We constantly hear that X. is so many pounds lighter than he ought to be, or that Y.’s chest is so many inches less than it should be for a boy of his height, and so on. I believe that the i)robleni of a boy’s growth is far too complex to be solved in so rough and ready a manner. 1 believe that the general scheme of his growth mioif be taken into account for purposes of diagnosis, and I am sure that, in order to ascertain what this scheme may be, an accurate and continuous i*ecord of his growth should be available. It maj’ appear that 1 have rather overstrained my argu- ment in taking the analogy of different tyj>es of horses and sheej), and that I have neglected the fact that averages are given for various different classes of the i)Oi)ulation, which may be supposed to corresi)ond roughly to the different types of the lower animals ; but it must not be forgotten that our boys ai-e not bred })urely from one class, like our })ure bred sheej) or hoi*ses ; that the chusses into which human beings are divided are few in number and very arbitrary ; that there is no such sharj) line of demarcation between them as there is, for instance, be- twetui a black-faced shee]) and a (’heviot ; and that the characteristic growth of an individual may be, ami often is, strongly infiuence<l by the })resence in his system of hereilitary tendencies (piite foreign to the class in which he is arbitrarily placed. It shouhl be one of the functions](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b22449450_0008.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
